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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/climate/blackrock-coal-texas-lawsuit.html
Did some of the biggest investors in the world buy up shares in coal companies to force them to produce less coal?
An unusual lawsuit in Texas claims that investment firms including BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street did just that, illegally colluding with one another to reduce coal production as part of a conspiracy to fight climate change.
In a federal court in Texas on Monday, a lawyer for BlackRock told a judge that the claims “defy economic reality” and that the lawsuit should be dismissed. “The complaint ignores that the coal market has been declining for decades for a host of reasons well before this alleged conspiracy,” said Gregg Costa, a lawyer with the firm Gibson Dunn, speaking on behalf of all three defendants.
A lawyer for Texas, which filed the suit late last year along with 10 other states, said BlackRock’s chief executive, Laurence D. Fink, has written in the past that corporations should set targets for greenhouse-gas reductions. For coal companies, that means “reducing output,” said the lawyer, Brian Barnes of the firm Cooper & Kirk.
Did some of the biggest investors in the world buy up shares in coal companies to force them to produce less coal?
An unusual lawsuit in Texas claims that investment firms including BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street did just that, illegally colluding with one another to reduce coal production as part of a conspiracy to fight climate change.
In a federal court in Texas on Monday, a lawyer for BlackRock told a judge that the claims “defy economic reality” and that the lawsuit should be dismissed. “The complaint ignores that the coal market has been declining for decades for a host of reasons well before this alleged conspiracy,” said Gregg Costa, a lawyer with the firm Gibson Dunn, speaking on behalf of all three defendants.
A lawyer for Texas, which filed the suit late last year along with 10 other states, said BlackRock’s chief executive, Laurence D. Fink, has written in the past that corporations should set targets for greenhouse-gas reductions. For coal companies, that means “reducing output,” said the lawyer, Brian Barnes of the firm Cooper & Kirk.
